I expect this thread will decend into arguing over which country is right/wrong. Until that happens, I do have some thoughts.

There are roughly....eight (maybe nine) countries capable of projecting force over any significant distance. Of those eight, it's unclear how many of them have the ability to pay for any sort of sustained force projection activity. Those are currently the only eight that have the ability to effectively engage in armed conflict with another functioning nation.

Other countries could engage in..."non-state" actions, but tolerance for that sort of thing has dropped signicantly in the last 12 years. But that's different than sustained force projection activity.

Force projection is expensive to maintain, and is even expensive to deploy. What sort of situation would develop that would require modern developed states to deploy that sort of firepower at each other, is unclear.

AspieACRES will bury you!

The framework of war is changing. Aircraft Carrier battle groups cannot hide.
The targets are no longer industrial production.

The ability to project power will still be there, but the ability to produce food and get it to people who can use it will be lost.

Our electric grid goes down by it's self, northeast blackouts, and is only restored because there are spare parts and other sources. New York without power for a month would be a disaster.

As our dumb press has been publishing, the key nodes of the phone and internet, where they are making a copy of this for the NSA, are not mobile, and cannot be protected. We have some local chemical EMP weapons, they take out all electronics for miles, fried and not to be repaired.

Some spot work on the grid, we go back to writing letters, with carbon copies to the NSA. A runaway nuke plant would be fun, just take down the grid, all control is lost. An EMP hand grenade could take out the backups.

Like turning your planes into the means to flatten your buildings, nuke plants can be weaponized.

It would be impossible to tell who did it.

Nature alone plans to kill us, back in the day of the telegraph a Solar Storm induced so much current, arcs were forming, starting fires, and it shut down the whole system. What did not burn was made of thick copper wire, so it worked after the storm. Computers would not, computers run everything.

Support of social programs. Funding NGOs for humanity, that will work to bring the Freedom Fighters of Syria to America, who get large donations traced back to the Saudis.

America is such a freedom loving place that the Chinese PLA could send in a million man army as long as they were illegals. We have fifteen million unaccounted for people in the country now.

The future of war will be large scale between developed nations, but not by open confrontation. Something disrupting crops for a year, famine will do the rest, followed by disease.

Loss of the power grid, it is back to paper and pens, as we scrapped the typewriters.

China loses money taking all industry. loss is made up in jobs feed their people. We lose out on maintaining technology, income, and feeding our people. It is war, as fought by a man in a suit.

For the first time we have no jobs for our educated young people. No one will go in debt and spend years if they can only get a minimum wage job. Our whole education system is based on producing a useful product. It took hundreds of years to build, and can be lost in a generation.

In another generation the world goes from eight billion to fifteen, there is not enough fresh water to go around, the oceans are failing, and rising sea level is taking farmland. Doubling food production seems doubtful.

Congress has been taken over by the Pod People. Their answer is to double the American population through immigration. Congress is friends with the Wraiths.The point of war is to take over your government, and by that measure we have lost.

Not necessarily. You could think that Israel are unlikely to use theirs, whereas Iran would.

I think the reverse is more likely. Iran is a long established nation that is not naturally an aggressor and does not see any advantage in waging a war with anybody. It's even trying to make peace with Iraq now that the puppet of the west Saddam Hussein is gone. Israel is a recently established nation on 'stolen' land largely populated by immigrants that has been in conflict with its neighbours since day one. It can only hope to survive by having a strong military backed up by the west if needs be.

Not necessarily. You could think that Israel are unlikely to use theirs, whereas Iran would.

I think the reverse is more likely. Iran is a long established nation that is not naturally an aggressor and does not see any advantage in waging a war with anybody. It's even trying to make peace with Iraq now that the puppet of the west Saddam Hussein is gone. Israel is a recently established nation on 'stolen' land largely populated by immigrants that has been in conflict with its neighbours since day one. It can only hope to survive by having a strong military backed up by the west if needs be.

Iran is currently ruled by Shi'ite Maniacs. If you recall the Ayatolah was perfectly willing to turn the youth of his nation into Islamic cannon fodder. The Israelis on the other hand put a high value on life, particularly -their lives-. They realize if they ever are the first to use nukes, they will be dropped by the U.S. and massively destroyed by their neighbors. The only use the Israelis have for Nukes is to execute the Samson Strategy. It goes like this: If I am going to die I will take everyone around me down with me.

That would have more than a local effect, but we do not like the neighborhood.

Anything else, expect to become a crater before you could act.

Samson was a suicide bomber. "Everyone around", is a vauge threat, Europe and Russia are not going to wait and see. A sudden canal from the Med to the Dead Sea is the other plan. Launch on warning is still the game plan.

North Korea and Iran declared their sites. A secret atomic power in the backyard had best come to it's senses.

Even a very limited atomic war in the mideast would Chernoble all of Europe, so they have an interest.